How is, the NSA’s incorporating of their PRISM surveillance program effect the American people, and why should the American people know about such programs.

The American people need to know about how the NSA’s PRISM surveillance program monitors their social media and Google searches because:

Names of Authors

Learning how the NSA operates can enable the public and legislators to see flaws in an already established system regarding privacy and security issues.

Because it would protect their rights as citizens.

The American people should know about this because it would lead the NSA to decide to be more cautious in doing false positives and maintain a respectable relationship and reputation with the government and American people.

The actions of the NSA are justified because security of our nation is ranked supremely above all else.(counter argument)

Finkbeiner, Ann

Edward Felten studies computer security at Princeton University in New Jersey, and claims that when researchers and the NSA work together, “there was a sense of certain lines that NSA wouldn’t cross, and now we’re not so sure about that.”

Many US researchers especially concerned with research based agenda accept what the NSA is doing like Christopher Monroe, a physicist at the University of Maryland in College Park; he asserts that “I understand what’s in the newspaper, but the NSA is funding serious long-term fundamental research and I’m happy they’re doing it.”

McKim, Robert

Robert McKim CEO for M/S Database Marketing portrays that “Congress is also considering giving companies an incentive to improve security protection by making it easier for consumers to sue companies and the directors of companies that violate their privacy.”

Robert McKim CEO for M/S Database Marketing, illustrates in his article Privacy notices: What they mean and how marketers can prepare for them, that “Congress has begun to set ground rules by taking steps to regulate privacy in industries that deal with the most sensitive personal data: financial services, health providers and e-commerce companies that market to children.”

Landau, Susan

Edward Snowden former NSA contractor and official leaker of many NSA classified files, has expressed his beliefs by stating that the “NSA and intelligence community in general is focused on getting intelligence wherever it can by any means possible. It believes, on the grounds of sort of a self-certification, that they serve the national interest.”

Former President Al Gore stated that “The NSA surveillance in my view violates the Constitution…The Fourth Amendment language is crystal clear. It isn’t acceptable to have a secret interpretation of a law that goes far beyond any reasonable reading of either the law or the Constitution and then classify as top secret what the actual law is.”

NSA director in 2001 General Michael Hayden suggested that empowering “the agency to collect communications…without a warrant would increase NSA’s speed and agility.”

Madsen, Wayne

NSA Director in 1997 General William Odom, was questioned on NSA lobbying and asserted that ”It’s a sense of talking to Members of Congress as we do on all sorts of legislation”… Odom never described what other legislation NSA actually ‘lobbied’ for or against.”

Wayne Madsen, an American investigative journalist, specializing in intelligence and international affairs, illustrates in his article that, “While NSA is seeking to expand its authority to cover the security of civilian government systems and even commercial systems, it has neglected to get its own house in order.”

Taslitz, E. Andrew

Professor at Duke University School of Law illustrates in this article, “Indeed, to read most United States Supreme Court case law under the Fourth Amendment, one would be hard-pressed to see any mention or other indication of understanding of the indignation felt by people like the protesting Ybor City residents or Judge Kozinski. The Court generally, though not always, conceives of privacy as a cognitively driven issue, divorced from human emotion.”

Professor Taslitz in his article summed up what “right” people are looking for when it comes to privacy, “In short, we want to choose the masks that we show to others; any such loss of choice is painful, amounting almost to a physical violation of the self. When we are secretly watched, or when information that we choose to reveal to one audience is instead exposed to another, we lose that sense of choice.”

Jamali, R. Hamid and Asadi, Saeid

Jamali is part of the Information Science program at Kharazmi University and Asadi is an Assistant Professor at Shahed University specializing in Information technology, and they both have illustrated through collecting data and research that, “Among the major search companies, Google has gained a reputation as one of the leading and most popular search engines. In 2006 in the USA there were 91 million queries searched daily on Google alone. The total number of queries searched daily on all search engines was 200 million ([30] Sullivan, 2006).” This hints that the NSA basing citizens off of Google searches may not be the most valid way of conducting surveillance and may be in endanger of creating a false positive.

Jamali and Asadi illustrate at exactly what the NSA might be unintentionally looking for that threatens the citizens’ privacy, “Information literacy skills may play a role in this type of information-seeking behavior”

Devine, Mansfield Steve

Nigel Cannings, technical director at Chase ITS explains the difficulty of intelligence gathering agencies face in decoding information from regular everyday conversations to what the agency is actually looking for, by providing a real life account(s), like the “Chinese takeaway” example in the article.

Devine, a professional journalist illustrates that “False positives, however, can have more wide-ranging implications. Whereas a false negative mainly affects the organization running the system, a false positive can have consequences for the rest of us.” This brings up causes for concern about the citizens’ rights that may be violated by the NSA.

George Tubin, senior security strategist at Trusteer explains that false positives themselves may occur when an agency is trying to play it save and check all the procedures and information that is being presented in front of them, and that may very well cause “inconvenience” to citizens’.

Siraj Ahmed Shaikh is a reader in cyber-security at Coventry University, he explains how the NSA’s action could be overlooked and forgiven through this illustration. “The reason this is relevant to the current debate is because the technology used to filter, or identify patterns of interest, is very similar,” he explains. “Ultimately, there has to be some capture of traffic at some end, and then some analysis engine is deployed for that purpose.”

Devine also adds that “He explains that the phrase, ‘if you’ve got nothing to hide, you’ve got nothing to fear’ is rendered null and void because everyone has something to fear from a false positive.”

Myself

I believe that since Snowden’s recent leaks, there has been increased awareness amongst American people about privacy issues and have asked legislators to amend the current issues concerning privacy and security.

I strongly believe that educating the people about this was the rightful decision of the news and media to made, just following the days of Snowden’s leaks because, this will in the long run protect American rights, especially concerning the 1st and 4th Amendments.

I believe that the NSA now will work harder to try their best to avoid false positives in order to gain back a good reputation and relationship with the American people and the federal government as well.

While I agree with the counter argument, I still have reservations with it because America was founded on the principles of the constitution of the United States of America and the rights it holds to its citizens’ should be upheld even by governmentally associated agencies like the NSA. This is also why we have a system of checks and balances not only in just the Government but also in our society as a whole.

I was surprised at the amount of content my research had pulled together but I still do need some more research. The areas that I need to get more information on is the third question mainly stated above and also my counter argument. I plan to look over my sources again and see if there is any information that I might have overlooked while using them, and then further my research as needed from there. These two areas on my synthesis matrix are the major concerns that I hold regarding the gaps that are seen above.

The process of the NSA implementing their domestic surveillance by using their PRISM surveillance program through Google searches directly effects the American people, and thus merits the right of the American people that should know about this because:

1. Learning how the NSA operates can enable the public and legislators to see flaws in an already established system regarding privacy and security issues.

2. Can cause awareness between the public and government officials that, its maybe time for reform.

3. The inner-workings of the NSA PRISM program can help illustrate how information gathering on the American public has been done for over the past decade.

4. Disclosure of such information about the NSA, could lead the NSA in the future to be less likely able to, or compiled to, cause or be involved in false positives.

5. Disclosure and understanding of this information about the NSA’s leaks, will help in the starting process of healing the broken trust and resentment the American people share towards this governmental agency and also it’s counterparts.

Part II:

1. “The greatest effect has been that erosion of trust, and this has manifested itself in a number of ways, ranging from the closing down of businesses to at least one bizarre spectacle.”

Devine asserts that this is one of the most damaging effects, the NSA leaks has on our society (Devine, 2013).

2. “In 2013, the agency’s mathematical sciences program offered more than US$3.3 million in research grants.”

Finkbeiner reports, that the NSA supports constant research all over the USA in order to propel their intelligence gathering programs, like PRISM (Finkbeiner, 2013).

3. “A privacy consultant hired by the American Bankers Association estimates that more than 50% of the financial institutions take inadequate steps to prevent fraud”.

This staggering data that was collected from quite a reputable source provided and illustrated by Mr. Mckim in the article proves that privacy is a major issue in America, no matter the form it takes (Mckim, 2001).

Ware, W. SECURITY AND PRIVACY IN COMPUTER SYSTEMS. Computer Law and Security Review: The International Journal of Technology and Practice, 27, 1-28. Retrieved July 15, 2014, from http://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/papers/2005/P3544.pdf

The main claim of the article is to explain the major events that occurs when gathering information and the inner workings of a typical computer system. Then the author delves into security and privacy situations, and finally suggests a solution to preserving privacy in computer systems.

Nugget:

“The hardware configuration of a typical resource sharing computer system is shown in Fig. 1. There is a central processor to which are attached computer-based files and a communication network for linking to remote users via a switching center. We observe first of all that the files may contain information of different levels of sensitivity… A large variety of hardware failures might contribute to software failures which, in turn, lead to divulgence.”

This illustrates how computer systems (suspected resource sharing ones) work with their relation to privacy and security issues. And it is later recognized in the article, that this system isn’t perfect and has some vulnerabilities and in order to attempt to fix the problems we have to be able so see these particular vulnerabilities first. And a big vulnerability that if checked and dealt with properly can protect overall privacy, is stated in the nugget as well.

Nugget:

“Within computer networks serving many companies, organizations, or agencies, there may be no uniform governing authority; an incomplete legal framework; no established discipline, or perhaps not even a code of ethics among users. At present there is not even a commonly accepted set of categories to describe levels of sensitivity for private information… There may be need for a monitoring and enforcement established analogous to that in the security situation.”

This nugget explains the very real trouble our society faces regarding privacy and security in the cyber world of computer systems. Not only are individuals at harm but whole organizations and governments around the world are at risk, and that’s what the public forgets and overlooks, especially during the events revolving around the NASA information leaks. And the nugget also hints at a possible solution with a remedy to the problem in the security situations. And even though this article was compiled a couple of years back, it helps shed light on the issue that we are facing today regarding privacy and security alike.

The author’s main claim is to show the role that Google search engines, have relating to scientists that are interested in information gathering and seeking. And how the results found in this article help illustrate that over all scientists are becoming more and more reliant on Google searches all to often.

Nugget:

“Web search engines are probably the most important means of retrieving information for web-based information systems. Among the major search companies, Google has gained a reputation as one of the leading and most popular search engines. In 2006 in the USA there were 91 million queries searched daily on Google alone. The total number of queries searched daily on all search engines was 200 million ([30] Sullivan, 2006).”

This illustrate why Google searches are mainly targeted for information gathering or seeking, weather it be known or unknown like in the case of the NSA event with Snowden’s leaks, that before then were largely unknown by the public. Search engines like these are no surprise when it comes to an agency like the NSA, and why they would use it to gather information on people, like the PRISM surveillance program.

Nugget:

“Information literacy skills may play a role in this type of information-seeking behavior…The preference of users for Google-type search tools might also encourage information service and database providers to implement some of the characteristics of Google, such as simplicity, into their services.”

This illustrates a valid and important point on how the NSA using Google searches on their PRISM surveillance program, may prove to be an inadequate way of gathering intelligence on the public. This not only creates a false positive, put also jeopardizes the trust the government has worked to hard to earn from the American people. And a good example of a false positive that could arise from this is the recent revelations on the news; that the NSA has been spying on five American Muslim leaders which also happen to be citizens, and ties quite nicely to the domestic surveillance programs that the NSA has been conducting. These citizens turned out to be falsely accused of any sort of terrorist activities and reputations took a drastic hit with the public condemning these actions of the NSA.

The article’s main theme is to raise awareness about important privacy issues that exist in America. Most of the information was derived from news media, privacy groups, and government websites. And although this is not a peer-reviewed source (at least to my knowledge), it does provide quite bit of substantial information regarding how our information as the public, becomes the NSA’s gathered information in its domestic surveillance program(s).

Nugget:

“NSA technicians have installed intercept stations at key junction points, or switches, throughout the country. These switches are located in large windowless buildings owned by the major telecommunication companies and control the domestic internet traffic flow across the nation. A fiber optic splitter is placed on the incoming communication lines and routes the traffic to an NSA intercept station for processing.”

This illustrates the basic routine operations that the NSA conducts in order to receive the lager majority of their “backdoor” information data and metadata on the public.

Nugget:

“Our partners at the FBI DITU (Data Intercept Technology Unit) extract information from the servers of nine major American internet companies: Microsoft, Yahoo, Google, Facebook, PalTalk, AOL, Skype, YouTube, and Apple. This important partnership gives us direct access to audio, video, photographs, e-mails, documents and connection logs for each of these systems. Established in 2007, the Top Secret Prism program has allowed us to closely track targeted individuals over time. Our ability to conduct live surveillance of search terms has given us important insights into their thoughts and intentions.”

This illustrates the various companies that are involved with or have connections to the NSA’s Prism surveillance program. And also explains that these “partnerships” are vital to the NSA operation in gathering information from the public. This nugget has also provided us with some history of the PRISM program, as it was established in 2007, and the likelihood of the NSA’s views (“Our ability to conduct live surveillance of search terms has given us important insights into their thoughts and intentions”) on how they interrupt their own PRISM program.

Synthesis:

All three articles relate to one another and help to illustrate the importance of the privacy and security issues being discussed alike, the inner workings of the NSA’s domestic surveillance program(s), especially the PRISM program, and how that computer systems need always vigilant watchers to watch over them as they are not perfect and certain information may fall into the wrong hands. We have seen just how Google searches specifically are best targeted for information gathering agencies such as the NSA. Also that sometimes the NSA isn’t necessarily always needed to be blamed for loss of vital information to someone else, as hardware and software problems becomes an issue, and even the user can be blamed as well for this dilemma. We are far from a perfect privacy versus security mix as Obama once spook of, but we know the problems that need to be fixed and with the proper legislation and the support of the American people, we can improve the citizens’ right to the First and Fourth Amendments by allowing them privacy, yet securing our country’s safety above.

**Please note that APA citation was used from the information provided in each source and was done to the best of my ability**

“The prescience of Kay and Goldberg’s vision was such that almost all the specific ideas for the uses of notebook computing developed in the group that Kay directed at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) proved to be worthwhile. The broader idea-that the notebook computer would be a general-purpose device, with educators and businesspeople and poets all using the same type of Dynabook-has also held true. The Dynabook vision came about because Kay, Goldberg, and others in their Learning Research Group at Xerox PARC considered the computer from a radically different perspective. (This approach may be the central maneuver in new media’s otherwise varied methodology.) While most saw the computer as a tool for engineers or, at most, businesspeople, Kay thought computers could be used even by children, and could be used creatively.”

This nugget from Personal Dynamic Media, by Alan Kay and Adele Goldberg helps illustrate the core central theme of this literature. And I believe that the central core theme of this literature is that redeveloping and redesigning the personal computer has indeed transformed our lives and made daily tasks accessible, and affordable to many consumers. As said in the nugget, even the new media approach that this course has been so tightly intertwined around has changed because of the creation of Dynabook. This so called notebook computer has not only been accessible to adults only but also to children in a simplified and convenient way for them to operate. It is even later stated that the Dynabook idea has been amongst the “most influential and prescient” ideas of the past thirty years. The Dynabook is a personalized easy to use system that may have in fact lead up to other inventions like the iPad, iPod, iPhone, and laptop. People of virtually all ages can access new media content at the comfort of their laps while sitting on a rather comfortable couch. The Dnyabook has the capability for completing all information-based tasks it’s owner give it and conducts problem-solving as well. The Dynabook has been truly one of the most innovative, creative and one of the most influential invention that has been created that effects so much of our lives. Truly if one puts enough thought into an idea, that idea can overcome any obstacle and perform wonders for society, and this a perfect example of why inventor of the world need to be incentivized more.

From the moment I read the article about Facebook controlling people’s emotions like that through their own manipulation of Facebook data and metadata with their so called already given consumer “consent”, I immediately thought about my own research and how the NSA was gathering all sorts data from the American people, essentially undetected as first without the American people knowing. And as I was creating the multimedia project, I have noticed that I took an almost exact same approach to this multimedia project as I did with the research that I have been doing thus far. I usually first tend to highlight and explain the main core points that are being stated with links and further explanations. And then I move on to other topics that help to bolster the explanation of the main theme of multimedia project/research that I’m conducting, and I may even use links or videos to illustrate this. The five most important decisions that I took in terms of my specific choices of links, images and the other digital tools and media are as followed. First, is the material that I’m about to use relevant to my topic. Second, is the material that I’m about to choice relevant to me getting the point across to the readers. Third, how can I incorporate this into my already written literature to make it seem to flow nicely with the literature already present. Fourth, did I make this all available and easy to understand for the reader, of what I’m truly trying to say here. Fifth, did I sell this off nicely to the reader, would the reader be satisfied if he or she had read this, what would be their first reactions. Note that all of these steps work like the increments on the gears of a bike, in order to move forward each step has to be completed or revised in order for the next to began. I choose to make the links where I made them because I thought to me and to the readers, that they would make sense and help elaborate more on the issue being discussed, and also help raise the standings of the literature that is being presented to the readers. I selected the images that I used from various websites but mainly from Google images itself, and I decided to put them where I thought the subject was about to change and the reader needed a break and take a look at some images, because one image can say way more than one word can. One think that I did outside the box I think is giving a link about the Facebook data research scientist, Adam Kramer himself.

Part II:

The design of my final inquiry project I think will be much larger then this multimedia project but have some of the key attributes to it as stated in Part I of this reflective writing. The inquiry project will be very detail-orientated about discussing the research question, and at the end present a question that is left up to the reader to decide what the answer should be to that particular question. The tools that I will use are scholarly articles (specifically quotes), videos discussing the issue(s) that are being presented, and helpful links to specify and make the reading easier on the reader. All these tools will help refine the major claim my research it trying to argue. This will probably reside on the internet next to the many analyzes and dissections about security versus privacy issues, the NSA, and also under Amendment given rights. What is unique about this research is that it can encompass so much yet stay within the guidelines of the course requirements about being a new media topic. What will be unique in this inquiry project assignment besides the images, links, and published videos, will be the many important quotes given by real everyday people, the quotes given by scholarly articles, and most importantly the many unexpected connections, made in my inquiry project that most wouldn’t even dream that there was a connection until now.

**Here are just some pieces of writing I might model into my inquiry project after, link#1, link#2, and link#3 (just to name a few).**

The main claim of the article is to explain on events that occurred revolving the NSA’s intelligence gathering leaks by Snowden and discuss the deep implications of what this event truly had on many people and not just the government and its reputation. The article also goes as far as to hint at a possible solution, to be able to see abnormal activities within a given system.

Nugget:

“The greatest effect has been that erosion of trust, and this has manifested itself in a number of ways, ranging from the closing down of businesses to at least one bizarre spectacle. Lavabit, a company that provided secure email services, shut down its offering saying that it could no longer guarantee users’ privacy. This was quickly followed by Silent Circle doing the same thing (although the company continues to offer secure voice and SMS services, which use peer-to-peer encryption and leave no sensitive information on servers). Silent Circle’s CEO, in an interview for the ContraRisk podcast, explained that email protocols involve too much metadata that cannot be adequately secured.”

This explains one of the most damaging effects, the NSA leaks has on our society. The literal loss of trust that the people have grown towards the NSA has manifested itself onto reality. Jobs are lost as a result and ultimately businesses fail and fall apart as they can no longer promise their customers security and privacy they crave for, their sensitive and valuable information. The repercussions of this event, may even lead some to wish that Snowden never leaked those NSA domestic surveillance programs.

Nugget:

“Both false positives (unnecessarily generating an alert or appearing to find a connection where none exists) and false negatives (missing the very thing you’re looking for) are problems in all systems that analyze data…With an intelligence system, a false positive could lead to you being investigated, questioned and even arrested. In one infamous case, that of Canadian Muslim Maher Arar, a false positive (albeit not automatically generated by computer) led to an innocent person being rendered to Syria and kept in jail for more than 10 months, where he was tortured…”There is no doubt that there is room for confusion of a kind where someone has a particular name, someone’s being tracked, there’s some sort of a false positive in cyberspace associated with them, and that could lead to something really unfortunate,” says Shaikh…Aside from the potential consequences for people being monitored, there’s another very good reason for striving to avoid false positives, and one that has not been a significant part of the debate around Prism and the other surveillance programs – and that’s cost.”

This illustrates the differences between false positives and false negatives, both of which are common terms used when speaking about intelligence organizations, and as such will be used in this research. This research is mainly concerned about false positives. The implications of false positives can be severe as stated in the nugget above. But also programs like Prism as stated above, tend to have many false positives within them, and have massive costs that are very hard to alleviate from, both for governmental and non-governmental peoples alike. False positives might even actually cause false negatives as focus is directed to somewhere else, while truly vital data to intelligence gathering agency is ultimately unfortunately missed by the intelligence agency itself. Shaikh later discusses in the article that false positives should be avoided by intelligence agency at all times, as this effects all of us, not just the agency.

Stein, J. The End of National Security Reporting?. IEEE SECURITY & PRIVACY, 11, 64-68. Retrieved July 11, 2014, from http://ieeexplore.ieee.org.proxy.library.vcu.edu/stamp/stamp.jsp?tp=&arnumber=6573292

The main claim of the article is expose the difficulty that reporters, in our society have in revealing government related information to the public.

Nugget:

“In federal court, especially in cases involving national security, reporters had nothing but the First Amendment to protect them from having to reveal sources-a thin reed these days. We could only hope the courts sided with us, lest we go to jail.”

This illustrates just how hard government makes it, on reporters these days to report vital information to the public. Reporters literally have to rely on the First Amendment and the good will and judgment of courts in order to just continue their career, and this especially is true when matters of security are involved. So it can be said that without a doubt that the information that was leaked from the NSA about privacy issues and security were obtained for the public after lots of hard work and scrutiny that the reporters had to endure.

Nugget:

“Attorney General Alberto Gonzales suggested that the Department of Justice might prosecute two New York Times correspondents, James Risen and Eric Lichtblau, for reporting that “President Bush secretly authorized the National Security Agency to eavesdrop on Americans… to search for evidence of terrorist activity without the court-approved warrants ordinarily required for domestic spying”…”In my 20 years of covering public policy, I have never felt so constrained in my ability to talk to sources and gather information as I do now,” Marisa Taylor, a national security reporter in McClatchy newpapers’ Washington bureau, said by email. “Many sources are afraid to be caught talking to a reporter even about unclassified matters that they believe the public has a right to know.””

This illustrate that the issue of the NSA and its leaked information about domestic surveillance on Americans is one of the many core topics being stated when difficultly of reporters reporting comes to discussion. A major type of difficulty that reporters face can be a lack of the source’s cooperation, which may effect their reporting. Also illustrated is the sheer difficultly that reporters have now more than ever in reporting. It can be seen that as time progresses so does the difficulty of reporting to the American people.

Taslitz, A. (2002). The Fourth Amendment in the twenty-first century: Technology, Privacy, and human emotions. Law and Contemporary Problems. Durham: Duke University School of Law.

The author’s main claim is to address the conflicting issues our society faces regarding the many clashes between 4th Amendment advocates and surveillance agencies over privacy and security.

Nugget:

“Indeed, to read most United States Supreme Court case law under the Fourth Amendment, one would be hard-pressed to see any mention or other indication of understanding of the indignation felt by people like the protesting Ybor City residents or Judge Kozinski. The Court generally, though not always, conceives of privacy as a cognitively driven issue, divorced from human emotion.”

This illustrates how the United States Supreme Court cases operate under issues that pertain to the fourth amendment. When looking into cases like these one needs to (including judges) put more thought into the perspective of the people that are being victimized by having their privacy breached by the agencies. This also illustrates one of many routes courts take when confronting the privacy issue.

Nugget:

“Privacy in the information age is best conceived as the maintenance of metaphorical boundaries that define the contours of personal identity. Identity is complex; different circumstances reveal different aspects of our nature. Each of us wears many masks wherein each mask reflects a different aspect of who we really are. We do not want our entire natures to be judged by any one mask, nor do we want partial revelations of our activities to define us in a particular situation as other than who we want to be. In short, we want to choose the masks that we show to others; any such loss of choice is painful, amounting almost to a physical violation of the self. When we are secretly watched, or when information that we choose to reveal to one audience is instead exposed to another, we lose that sense of choice.”

This illustrates exactly what the privacy issue is all about. And in an age of highly advanced techniques combined with highly advanced technology, agencies like the NSA truly do have the power to oversee all, and many could even fear the events of what occurred in George Orwell’s novel 1984, come to fruition. The creation of privacy itself is truly a cognitive creation and exists in the cognitive world, but is vital and has great and vast implications in reality as we know it.

Synthesis:

All three articles relate to one another and help to illustrate the privacy issue and the relatively recent events that revolve around it. These articles allowed us to capture and conceive events related to privacy that were never before seen in this research until now, like how hard it really is for reporters to report so that they can help protect the interests of the American people. So many topics can be unexpectedly, related to the privacy issues, like business shut downs, reporters finding it difficult to do their jobs, and loss of trust to agencies that unintentionally make the people blame and distrust the government which has negative implications for everyone. After this research I know realize that the NSA and the privacy issues linked to it goes far deeper and more complex and intertwined with itself more than I could have ever anticipated. Even recently I have heard on the news on CNN that the NSA has been caught spying on 5 American-Muslim leaders, that in the news itself have come to the conclusion of that they were wrongly accused and spied on for potential terrorist activities, because of just being Muslims. Here is the link to the video pertaining to this.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/09/us/muslim-spying-allegations/index.html

**Please note that APA citation was used from the information provided in each source and was done to the best of my ability**

Facebook tinkered with users’ feeds for a massive psychology experiment

By William Hughes

Jun 27, 20143:30 PM

Scientists at Facebook have published a paper showing that they manipulated the content seen by more than 600,000 users in an attempt to determine whether this would affect their emotional state. The paper, “Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks,” was published in The Proceedings Of The National Academy Of Sciences. It shows how Facebook data scientists tweaked the algorithm that determines which posts appear on users’ news feeds—specifically, researchers skewed the number of positive or negative terms seen by randomly selected users. Facebook then analyzed the future postings of those users over the course of a week to see if people responded with increased positivity or negativity of their own, thus answering the question of whether emotional states can be transmitted across a social network. Result: They can! Which is great news for Facebook data scientists hoping to prove a point about modern psychology. It’s less great for the people having their emotions secretly manipulated.This may also cause concern among the public that were notified of this issue. As source(s) indicates that many people use their mobile devices to check up on news and other activities quite frequently at an alarming rate, raising the questions of, can Facebook really alter the way we can perceive reality around us, and should we be concerned about this. In order to sign up for Facebook, users must click a box saying they agree to the Facebook Data Use Policy, giving the company the right to access and use the information posted on the site (and yes that’s in the fine print). The policy lists a variety of potential uses for your data, most of them related to advertising, but there’s also a bit about “internal operations, including troubleshooting, data analysis, testing, research and service improvement.” In the study, the authors point out that they stayed within the data policy’s liberal constraints by using machine analysis to pick out positive and negative posts, meaning no user data containing personal information was actually viewed by human researchers. And there was no need to ask study “participants” for consent, as they’d already given it by agreeing to Facebook’s terms of service in the first place.Facebook data scientist Adam Kramer is listed as the study’s lead author. In an interview the company released a few years ago, Kramer is quoted as saying he joined Facebook because “Facebook data constitutes the largest field study in the history of the world.” It’s a charming reminder that Facebook isn’t just the place you go to see pictures of your friends’ kids or your racist uncle’s latest rant against the government—it’s also an exciting research lab, with all of us as potential test subjects.